In a field just off Idaho Highway 45, descendants of participants in the Cardston Trail wagon train closed their eyes and said a prayer as traffic rolled by.
In a mix of gingham dresses and modern-day sandals, hand-knit shawls and fleece, about 90 members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are retracing the trail that several polygamist families took from Smithfield to Cardston, Alberta, Canada, in 1887.Those families traveled to Canada seeking refuge from the U.S. government, which sought to arrest polygamists after the practice of plural marriage was outlawed by Congress in 1862. The church disavowed polygamy in 1890.
People who began a 735-mile trip to Cardston from the southeastern Idaho town of Preston on Aug. 10 are celebrating their heritage and finding what Crystal Snow of Provo called an appreciation for their pioneer forebears.
"To them, the pleasures of the world were nothing as long as they were working for their family," Snow, whose great-great-great-grandfather was one of the 1887 settlers, said Wednesday. "You learn a lot about that on the trek."
Although the original route early church members took often runs near what now are highways and county roads, Snow and others stuck as close to it as possible, traveling through fields and up mountains to reach Idaho Falls on Tuesday.
"Doing the trail supports the heritage we have," said Max Pitcher of Alpine, Wyo. "It's not a condolence or affirmation of polygamy, but you have to be sympathetic about it."
Pitcher, a retired oil company executive, has spent years planning the wagon train. He researched the route and made arrangements for participants to stay in pastures along the way. Instead of starting from Smithfield, they began in Preston to avoid a temporary horse quarantine in northern Utah.
Pitcher drove a team with other covered wagons in 1996 during the commemoration of the church's exodus from Nauvoo, Ill., to Council Bluffs, Iowa. Last summer, he was part of the Sesquicentennial Trail from Omaha, Neb., to Salt Lake City.
But the Cardston Trail is dearest to his heart, Pitcher said on Wednesday as he sat in red long underwear before breakfast. He pointed south as he spoke about how some families were split up during the flight to Canada.
Many men were forced to leave some or all of their wives during that time, Pitcher said. His great-grandfather, polygamist Morgan Hinman, dodged federal officials in Logan, until 1887.
"The story is, he hid in the bush, and his house was searched in Logan," Pitcher said. "Then he decided to go to Canada."
For present-day Canadian Latter-day Saints, the trek northward served to expand the church, and they are thankful.
Jane Anderson, of Calgary, Alberta, is walking the Cardston Trail with her children Laura, 10, and Daniel, 9, because she wants them to know how the church came to be in Canada.
"It was an important migration," said Harmen Feenstra of Calgary, Anderson's father. "The LDS Church was destined to go worldwide, and this was one of the blessings of it."